|
The Bornox I:1
By Darth Chicken
The Bornox
Part I Chapter 1
"Gods are fragile things, they may be killed by a wiff of science or a dose of common sense"- Chapman Cohen
The tug shouldered its way through Becket’s Pass, its bow wave splashing through a flat ribbon of mist that spread from Conclusion head light to Crescent beach. Behind it, riding rough and full on the end of a 1500-foot cable, the 12,000-ton limestone barge slid solidly through the light chop of the slack tide.
Sullivan retained his grip on the wheel with his right hand while he leaned over to take one last reassuring glance at the radar screen. Except a scattering of blips along the lighthouse side of the passage where trollers were trying for cohoe and spring salmon, there was nothing to worry about. Ten minutes and they’d be out of the pass and into Conclusion harbor. He could take a break now.
The mate, long familiar with Sullivan's method of doing things, appeared at the wheelhouse door almost as though he had been summoned. Ronnie Sullivan glanced over his shoulder and made a brief beckoning gesture. “How’d you like to take over here, Paul?”
The mate advanced to the wheel. He had a full cup of coffee in his hand which he passed to Sullivan. All of this was a familiar ritual; these two worked well together. In fact Sullivan got along well with most of the company crew members; which is not to say they all liked him, or any of them counted him as a close personal friend. But four war years on Canadian corvettes, mostly in the North Atlantic, and twenty-five years on tugs graduating to the big, ocean-going salvage jobs had made him a good man to crew under. On this coast with its 14-knot tide rips, its sudden gales and storms tearing in from the Gulf Stream, its murderous outcroppings of hidden reefs, and the ever present danger of shipping lanes shrouded in fog; on this far Atlantic edge of Canada, tugboat crews picked a good skipper over a good friend every time.
Ronnie Sullivan had the unquestioning confidence of this crew or any other crew he was likely to be assigned. At the same time none of the five men aboard the tug would ever share a game of cards with him in his comfortable living room, or sit down to one of Lee’s great roast-beef dinners.
The dispatcher’s voice filled the wheelhouse with a clatter of sound. “Trident, we’ve got you coming out of Becket’s Pass. Confirm your position.”
Sullivan leaned into the microphone and pressed the button. “Trident here. Three minutes and we’re into the harbor. ETA to port...” He glanced at the wheelhouse chronometer. “1745, give a little, take a little. Give my wife a call will you, Alex?” He turned inquiringly to the mate and recieved his nod. “Paul’s wife too.”
“I’ll take care of it,” the metallic voice promised, and then the sound and its surrounding static were gone, replaced again by the powerful throb of the tug’s engines pushing its way through three layers of plate decking and insulation.
Trident dropped the barge at anchor shortly after 1700 hours. At 1714 Sullivan brought the tug alongside the company wharf and left it with the mate to secure. Feeling like he was forgetting something Sullivan entered the wheelhouse to discover the radio was on. “Trident, this is The Bornox, is there anyone on standby?”.
With a look of exhaust and disgust Sullivan picked up the microphone, “What's your position?”.
Static followed with ruffles of breaking silence, then in pure annoyance Ronnie Sullivan looked out the wheelhouse window to see a city of light silently floating towards him. Its bow twice the girth and three times the height of the Trident, this ship was at least two hundred feet long if not more.
“Paul!, Get on deck!”
With that Sullivan turned back to find his ghost ship had vanished.
“Yeah Skip?”
“Have..a..good leave.”
“Thank you sir. You to”
With that Sullivan lowered his microphone and left the Trident. Within fifteen minutes time he was cruising at an easy sixty on the freeway home.
Lee must have been gone for a few hours. Twilight had crept back into the house from the brisk November chill. Sullivan made his way to the kitchen, sitting there on the stove was a lobster pot warming up what smelled like beef stew.
“Well fuck her, if she’s not going to be here when I come home after weeks at sea...”, Sullivan (ranting to himself) decided that maybe a bottle of cheap brandy and cigars were in order.
The radio blaring and sipping off brandy Sullivan could taste Lee’s mean beef stew already. The highway was empty and pitch black save the cars headlights.
“There's a feeling I get when I look to the west,
And my spirit is crying for leaving.
In my thoughts I have seen rings of smoke through the trees,
And the voices of those who stand looking.
Ooh, it makes me wonder,
Ooh, it really makes me wonder.”
Realizing that he liked the song Sullivan turned up the radio to near ear-shatter.
“And it's whispered that soon if we all call the tune
Then the piper will lead us to reason.
And a new day will dawn for those who stand long
And the forests will echo with laughter.”
“Laughter, eh? We’ll see who has the last goddamn laugh!” With that The pressure of bone hitting glass echoed through the night. A thousand tiny grains of plastic and glass flew into the air then glistening in the moonlight fell back to the frosty earth. The radio seemed to slowly die away with the song coming to a close.
“And as we wind on down the road
Our shadows taller than our soul.
There walks a lady we all know
Who shines white light and wants to show
How everything still turns to gold.”
And if you listen very hard
The tune will come to you at last.
When all are one and one is all
To be a rock and not to roll.”
#############################################################################
Faltering slowly through the trees a man of about thirty panted and sweated. Blood dripped slowly from his face due to Isaiah’s fall on some ice while running. The quickest way from his house to the 7-A exit of the Highway was the woods so it didn’t take more then a second on the phone to send him on his trek.
Isaiah was in bed when he heard the call. Drinking, car accident, stupid. That was about as much as he could muster out of Ronnie’s voice. So after calling the police to get an ambulance down there he started sprinting towards his troubled brother.
“I didn’t even think the dumb fucker had a cell phone.”, Isaiah approached the Highway panting and saw the wreckage. The car had crashed into a tree, Sullivan was launched from the vehicle and lay about 12’ from the tree. He was unconscious and laying in a pool of blood.
Isaiah ran towards the body. “Ronnie! Come on! Oh shit! Shit!”
He knew that he shouldn’t touch the body so he dropped to the ground and began to cry.
The lights of the ambulance shredded through the dark forest. The police officer had immediately came and began asking Isaiah questions.
“How did you know to come here?”
“He called me on a cellular phone.”
“Where is it?”
“I don’t know! How the fuck does this help my brother?!?”
“Hey! I understand your distressed, but I have to file a report. Now lets go over this. You say he called you from a cell phone that we can’t seem to find. Also there were no signs of the body moving at all. Which suggests that he was unconscious the whole time.". The cop was really good at pretending he cared; it was 2 a.m. he just wanted to go to bed.
“Yeah. That's about the size of it.”
“Okay then. Are you going to ride with the ambulance?”
“Yeah. I guess so.”
########################################################################
The company wharf was still. The small patter of waves hitting the supports could be heard but nothing more. The Bornox was preparing to set sail and one member of the crew had been chosen...
4/28/2004 10:42:40 PM
(Updated: 4/28/2004 11:00:18 PM)
Comment on this fan fiction!
|
|
|
